Most adult females glow for only one or a few nights to attract males, which is followed by mating, and soon after, they lay their eggs and die. Larval development takes one to four years and adult lifespan is of few weeks. Glow-worms are capital breeders: they feed only as larvae, rendering this stage critical for storing energy, and potentially, for acquiring commensal and pathogenic organisms. Larva glow is a warning signal for distastefulness and adult females produce green light to attract flying males. The common glow-worm ( Lampyris noctiluca) is a nocturnal beetle, whose larvae and sedentary females emit highly visible green light. Most of the glow-worm RNA viruses seem to be transmitted vertically, which may reflect the biology of glow-worms as non-social capital breeders, i.e., they invest stored resources in reproduction. Here we present the characterization of load, prevalence, and interactions for each virus. On average, an individual glow-worm had seven different RNA virus types and most of them appeared to establish a stable infection since they were found from glow-worms during two consecutive years. Similar viral sequences were found from the sequencing data of common eastern firefly of North America, a species belonging to the same family (Lampyridae) as that of the common glow-worm.
We also found a complete retroviral genome. The viruses represent nine different virus families and have negative, positive, or double-stranded RNA genomes. We identified viral sequences from 11 different virus taxa by the RNA-sequencing of two Finnish populations of adult glow-worms. Glow-worms are virologically interesting, as they are non-social and do not feed as adults, and hence their viral transmission may be limited. However, both their DNA and RNA viruses remain unknown. The common glow-worms ( Lampyris noctiluca) are best known for emission of green light by their larvae and sexually active adult females.
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